The Addicted Brain

BOOK: The Addicted Brain: Why We Abuse Drugs, Alcohol, and Nicotine

AUTHOR: Michael Kuhar, Ph.D

GRADE: D

Were The Addicted Brain turned in as a high school freshman’s research paper, I’d award the young man with a solid B+ and a empathic warning against the overuse of exclamation points in an academic paper. However, that is not the case. Rather, the book I’ve just finished was written by a professional with a Ph.D and a degree in neuroscience. Given those credentials, I was stunned by the elementary writing style, the overly abundant –and completely gratuitous – use of exclamation points and the persistent use of Wikipedia as a reliable source of information used by Michael Kuhar. The first warning issued upon entering high school is that Wikipedia is simply not where 80% of your information should come from. In fact, I recall being warned that ANY use of Wikipedia would result in an Incomplete and would require me to re-write the entire assignment. Clearly, Mr. Kuhar missed that memo.

Perhaps I sound overly harsh here? Allow me to further explain my two most pressing points of contention before you label me evil.

My first issue is that the book is subtitled: Why We Abuse Drugs, Alcohol, and Nicotine. A proper subtitle would sound more like this: Cocaine for Dummies. When I read a subtitle with three parts (i.e: drugs, alcohol and nicotine), I have the expectation that there will be equal (or relatively close) attention paid to each of the three parts – otherwise why list them in the title? This is not the case here. Roughly 85% of The Addicted Brain is focused exclusively around cocaine. The other 15% manages to deal with the following: alcohol, nicotine, gambling, sex addiction, meth, marijuana, PCP and overeating. Thus, I found the title to be misleading and the text to be overly focused on one topic.

My second issue is that the language used by the author is simply, repetitive, and displays a lack of understanding of the written language in general. There are inconsistencies in the some of the chapter headings that make following along difficult and tedious. I found myself often wondering where the editor was in this situation.

This being said; the research was presented in a manner easily digestible to anyone aged 13 and up and the images were interesting (although not breathtaking as promised) and did serve to further clarify the author's points. Still, I would have a hard time recommending The Addicted Brain to anyone other than a middle school-er interested in cocaine use and abuse.